St. Patrick's Day

Paddy was driving down the street in a sweat because he had an important meeting and couldn't find a parking place. Looking up to heaven he said, "Lord take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I’ll go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of me life and give up me Irish Whiskey".

Miraculously, a parking place appeared.

Paddy looked up again and said, "Never mind, Lord, I found one."

Aren’t we all like Paddy sometimes? Don’t we try to play Let’s Make a Deal with God? I know I do. Sometimes it’s a direct offer. “God is you’ll do this, I’ll do that.” Other times, it’s less of a deal and more sneaky on our part, especially during Lent.

For example, have you ever given up something for Lent but the temptation was just too much for you and you gave in? Then you try to justify it. “You know, when I said I’d give up chocolate, I didn’t mean DARK chocolate, just milk chocolate. And WHITE chocolate really isn’t even chocolate, so it doesn’t count.”

Or, did you ever play the “finger game”? The finger game is like in checkers, where your turn isn’t over until you take your finger off. “Lord, I know I said I wouldn’t eat between meals, but the phone rang before I was really finished with breakfast, so this donut is still part of breakfast and not really a snack.”

But you know what? We’re not fooling God. We’re really not even fooling ourselves, are we? We laugh at the story of Paddy and the parking place because we can put ourselves in that same spot. Like my kids say, “it’s funny because it’s true.“ We’re weak. We’re subject to temptation. And, we’re not always reliable when we promise things to God.

The Archbishop recognizes our weakness. He gave us dispensation from Friday abstinence today so we could celebrate the feast day of St. Patrick in the traditional way, with corned beef and cabbage. He didn’t have to do that, even though he is Irish. A lot of us would have gotten by. We could celebrate tomorrow. The feast only falls on Friday once every five years or so.

But, by giving us an out, letting us eat meat today in exchange for not eating meat some other day this week, he saved a lot of us from having to bargain with God. That is, unless we can’t manage to abstain some other day. And of course, for those who aren’t lucky enough to be Irish, it’s probably no big deal anyway. Then again, a lot of the less fortunate do like to PRETEND to be Irish on St. Paddy’s Day.

But, as we celebrate what’s become a big secular holiday, we should also remember that Patrick brought Christianity an entire country. While we know little about him, many millions of people are Catholic today because of him. And he wasn’t really Irish either.

Here’s another religious story for you, kind of a St. Patrick’s Day bonus.
An Irish priest gets stopped for speeding. The state trooper smells alcohol on the priest's breath and then sees an empty wine bottle on the floor of the car. He says, "Sir, have you been drinking?"
"Just water," says the priest.
The trooper says, "Then why do I smell wine?"
The priest looks at the bottle and says, "Good Lord! He's done it again!"

May your home always be too small to hold all of your friends.